Conveyer lines move items from place to place where work is performed on them. By way of example, a modern bakery will mix a 2000 pound batch of dough for buns, rolls and/or bread. The dough gets treated, pounded, shaped, cut and dropped into shaped containers for baking, cooling, removal, bagging, labeling and stacking for shipment. It is not unusual to have up to 5,000 trays or pans going through this process at the same time. Any jam up or misalignment of pans on the conveyer belt or track can cause severe product loss, equipment damage and costly downtime in production. All dough in the baking area in a conveyer stoppage becomes overbaked and must be discarded. All of these contribute to the cost of the product.
Conveyer line equipment manufacturers have attempted to solve the pan or tray askew and resultant conveyer stoppage problem by magnitizing the conveyer grids on which the metal trays or pans are carried. While they will not shift or turn, if they enter the system crooked they will stay that way. This requires extra care and time in loading. Others use a complex system of electric eyes, timers and switches to stop the systems in the event of crooked or shifting pans. Stopping the movement at any part of the system effects the size, quality and bake of the product. Moreover, these are corrective methods after the problem occurs but are not preventative so as to keep the conveyer line moving.